Top Official Suspected of Oil Links With Russia

2-3 October 04 issue of
Gazeta Wyborcza

The recent mysterious death of Marek Karp, the creator and head of the
Eastern Studies Centre (OSW), one of Europe’s best independent think
tanks on Russia, has shone a spotlight on an inconspicuous but
influential public servant, reports Gazeta Wyborcza. That man is
Robert Gmyrek, director of biofuels at PKN Orlen, the oil company, and
former deputy minister of farming. It was Gmyrek whom Karp had gone to
investigate in Russia before he was wounded in a freak car accident
near Poland’s border with Belarus and died a month later in
hospital. Several days before his accident, Karp visited, among other
things, the agency for internal security (ABW), and Zbigniew
Wassermann, deputy head of the parliamentary committee of inquiry into
PKN Orlen. Karp reportedly told the ABW he feared for his life, and
spoke of three OSW collaborators recently murdered in
Russia. Mr. Wassermann confirmed that Karp had claimed to have
important information about Gmyrek which he was to present to the
committee.

Karp went to Russia, writes Wyborcza, to seek evidence for Gmyrek’s
ties to Russian oil companies and related transfers of cash. He
probably also wanted to ascertain whether Gmyrek had links to the
Russian special services. Karp met Gmyrek in 2000 during an official
Polish delegation to Georgia, Armenia, Uzbekistan, and Azerbaijan. He
later told friends how surprised he had been when Gmyrek, previously
invisible, suddenly became animated in Azerbaijan whenever the subject
of oil came up.

Gmyrek, writes Wyborcza, has good relations with the Russian
embassy. He is acquainted with Nikolai Zachmatov, the embassy’s grey
eminence and officially the Russian Federation’s trade representative
to Poland. Zachmatov, a frequent guest at the farming ministry’s
veterinary department, would always first visit Gmyrek’s room, do his
business, and come to Gmyrek again.

Gmyrek, a veterinary surgeon by profession, has no direct links to any
political party. He unsuccessfully ran for parliament from the Freedom
Union list in 1997, but he has never been a member. Still, in 1999,
under then farming minister Jacek Janiszewski, he was nominated the
deputy head of the veterinary services. A year later, under Artur
Balazs, he was promoted to deputy minister in charge of veterinary
affairs. He surprised everyone when, following the Democratic Left
Alliance’s (SLD) 2001 election victory, he was not, like most from the
former coalition, axed, but instead was nominated director for
biofuels at Poland’s largest company. Gmyrek served at various posts
at Orlen: director for biofuels, deputy director for development, or
supervisory board member of the company’s cardiologic foundation. As a
company employee says, he was also then chief executive Zbigniew
Wrobel’s close aide. Gmyrek and Wrobel could have met when the latter
served as chief of PepsiCo’s Eastern European operations.

Gmyrek is also in close relations with Artur Balazs, the long-time
chief of the Conservative Popular Party (SKL), a politician known for
his good contacts with everyone from the president, through the Civic
Platform (PO), to the Polish Peasant Party (PSL). Andrzej Smietanko
(PSL), former chief of tycoon Aleksander Gudzowaty’s biofuel holding,
who was tipped to get the Orlen biofuel job that Gmyrek got instead,
says that Balazs stood behind Gmyrek’s nomination to the farming
ministry as well as his appointment at Orlen. “The biofuels are a
major business, so it’s good to have control over everything, and make
sure that Orlen signs the supply deal with the right company,” says
Smietanko. The idea was to build a single large biofuel factory that
would process the whole material and virtually monopolise the
market. That concept, says Smietanko, was supported by Gmyrek and
Balazs, who wanted to make a deal with Zbigniew Komorowski, an
influential PSL politician and owner of a sprawling food and farming
empire. Komorowski already founded a company to produce the biofuel
component,reserved a site for a plant and now awaits Orlen’a decision
on signing with him a supply deal. At Orlen itself, virtually all of
Wrobel’s people are gone ? except Robert Gmyrek. mw

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress